Advertising
Court ruling threatens Republicans’ midterm TV ad advantage
Axios
“The 2-1 ruling would block Republicans from using cash-rich party committees to buy more political TV ads at discounted rates.”
National Democrats and Republicans squeeze local TV stations in ad rate war
Axios
“Democrats tend to do their strongest fundraising at the candidate level while Republicans generally dominate national party and super PAC spending, meaning the decision was a win for Democrats.”
Top GOP Media Shop IMGE Acquires Direct Persuasion
Campaigns & Elections
“When existing platforms could not answer the questions our clients needed answered, we built our own. Joining IMGE allows us to scale those tools across a broader client base while continuing to innovate alongside one of the industry’s leading digital agencies.”
Campaigns
Nobody Owns The Campaign Talent Problem
Campaigns & Elections
“Coordinated spending can also be used for staff payroll, but the cap made this practically impossible. In the decision between salary and TV, mail, digital, texting and phones, the latter always won out. Now that trade off is gone.”
The new silent majority? Voters who don’t seek out news.
FWIW
“If we don’t build strategies for the 54% of people who tune out the news, we are walking away from the voters who decide elections.”
Polling
Fake Surveys and Big Misses: Pollsters Face Challenges in 2026
Campaigns & Elections
“What makes the Median Strategies debacle so game-changing, according to Cohen, is that the polls that claimed to conduct never actually existed. In fact, the entire firm itself was a sham.”
Social Media
Paid actors, AI writing: How a new kind of video business cashed in on America’s divided politics
Semafor
“Turbocharged by AI, these ‘ghost creator’ accounts appear to be run not by political operatives trying to win, or foreign intelligence efforts seeking to destabilize the US, but by engagement junkies detached from the stakes of politics.”
Influencers Have a Lot to Say About Politics. Many Are Quietly Paid for It.
New York Times
“There are no federal regulations requiring disclosure of payments for political support on social media, and only a few states have such rules. That allows influencers, in most instances, to endorse candidates for a fee without ever disclosing those payments in their posts.”
Technology
Winning the AI vote
Orchestra
“If the answer changes across models, the campaign may have a messaging gap, a source gap — or too little consistent language online. A scattered answer is a diagnostic for deeper communications problems.”
What AI models are saying to voters ahead of the midterms
Evertune
“About 650,000 prompts a week were about Republicans or Democrats in August, according to data from EverPanel’s more than 150 million real user conversations. About 40,000 prompts a week focused on November’s midterm elections in particular.”
Democrats Are Getting Some Answers to Their Chatbot Problems
NOTUS
“But Republicans hold an advantage on their economic storytelling through chatbots, the study found — a key issue for the midterms, which have been dominated by cost-of-living concerns.”